Through investments in the cloud, advanced machine learning and augmented reality (AR), coupled with new partnerships, the company hopes to empower customers to maximise their return on capital investment and to improve profitability.

“Defining and executing an asset performance strategy is a critical component to improving productivity while safeguarding business continuity,” said Kim Custeau, Asset Performance Management Business Lead at Schneider Electric. “We have been delivering proven, industry leading asset performance solutions for nearly 30 years, and continue to invest in a long-term strategy to drive innovation in this area. Our focus is to provide real value to our customers by empowering them to maximise return on capital investment and improve profitability. We are proud to see our customer results speak for themselves with significant reported savings.”

“Industrial IoT (IIoT) and Industry 4.0 provide new opportunities to improve overall business performance, particularly for APM. For owner-operators, this includes operational improvements largely involving improved asset reliability,” said Ralph Rio, Vice President Enterprise Software at ARC Advisory Group. “Users have reported that moving from preventive maintenance to predictive or prescriptive approaches provided a 50% savings in maintenance labour and MRO materials. With predictive and prescriptive maintenance, near-zero unplanned downtime for critical equipment can be achieved.”

Machine Learning and Prescriptive Analytics

Machine learning and advanced pattern recognition play a central role within Schneider Electric’s asset performance solutions, enabling customers to more accurately predict – and proactively resolve – issues before they impact their business. This increases reliability, reduces costs and improves safety; for example, Schneider cites Duke Energy, which prevented an estimated US$35 million cost from early warning detection of a steam turbine problem. Ascend Performance Materials now responds faster to alerts with actionable intelligence, saving an estimated US$2 million through avoided plant shutdowns alone. As part of the expansion of Schneider Electric’s cloud platform, these predictive and prescriptive maintenance capabilities can now be implemented in locations where it previously was not economically feasible.

Augmented Reality (AR)

Innovative companies are changing how they run their business, with Schneider Electric’s AR as an integral part of their APM strategy. In the chemical industry, BASF is implementing AR to improve asset performance, reliability and utilisation while increasing production efficiency. During maintenance work execution, technicians can now leverage an augmented digital representation of the asset to improve efficiency and safety. The digital asset model captures years of experience and expertise which empowers the new workforce.

Cloud and Hybrid Deployment

Schneider Electric offers commercial and technical flexibility to address every customer need, delivering solutions through a range of deployment models (Cloud, Hybrid, On-Premise) and commercial purchase options (Subscription, SaaS, Perpetual). WaterForce partnered with Schneider Electric to develop an IIoT remote monitoring and control system in the cloud that allows farmers to operate irrigation pivots with greater agility, efficiency and sustainability.

New Partnerships

MaxGrip and Schneider Electric recently announced a new partnership agreement to expand APM consulting and add Risk-based Maintenance capabilities. The APM assessment is a critical first step for industrial companies to evaluate their asset reliability and digital transformation strategy. This review takes into account business context to benchmark current performance, identify areas for improvement and deliver an APM roadmap.

Schneider Electric and Accenture recently completed development of a Digital Services Factory to rapidly build and scale new predictive maintenance, asset monitoring and energy optimisation offerings. As a result of these partnerships, a large food and beverage company saved over US$1 million in maintenance costs.

Schneider Electric now offers management of millions of assets across grid infrastructures, by extending its expertise through a partnership with IPS Company Group, recognised for its specialised Asset Performance Management solution for electric power systems. This combination of asset performance management software portfolios addresses the growing demands of transmission and distribution utilities.